Prime Minister Stephen Harper's micro-shuffle today involved David Emerson, Michael Fortier, Christian Paradis, and James Moore. It is Harper's fourth cabinet configuration. Here's some numbers on the current set-up: Positions: Prime Minister: 1 Ministers: 26 Secretarys of State: 5 Gender: Men: 25 Women: 6 Stability: There are nine ministers who have the same jobs they had from Harper's original cabinet of February, 2006: Harper (PM), Blackburn (Labour), Thompson (Veterans Affairs), Lunn (Natural Resources), Clement (Health), Flaherty (Finance), Hearn (Fisheries), Day (Public Safety), Cannon (Transport).

OK, reading what I already wrote, OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper will appoint "new members of the Ministerial team" Wednesday morning, in a widely expected fine-tuning of his cabinet triggered by the resignation last month of former Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier. The new ministers will be sworn in at Rideau Hall, the official residence of the Governor General, at 11 a.m. Christian Paradis, a rookie MP from Quebec who is the Secretary of State for Agriculture, is the likely candidate to get the job of International Trade minister, leaving the incumbent, David Emerson, free to focus on the Foreign Affairs portfolio, a job handed to him on an interim basis in the wake of Bernier's resignation...